Wednesday, September 18, 2013

THE ATLANTIC has a fascinating article on how parasites can change how you think and react. No foolin’, they have found that infected people have more car accidents, for example. “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy”, by Kathleen McAuliffe looks at the research of a Czech scientist, Jaroslav Flegr whose research on a single-cell parasite called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) is now being validated, after years of obscurity, which is not surprising.

Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.

Take five, and give the article an appraisal, because it's not just Toxo doin’ it:

But T. gondii is just one of an untold number of infectious agents that prey on us. And if the rest of the animal kingdom is anything to go by, says Colorado State University’s Janice Moore, plenty of them may be capable of tinkering with our minds.